Origin

Mid 17th century: from French, from modern Latingnomus, a word used by Paracelsus as a synonym of Pygmaeus, denoting a mythical race of very small people said to inhabit parts of Ethiopia and India (compare with pygmy).

You would not really confuse a gnome with a pygmy, but the terms are closely related. It was probably the Swiss physician Paracelsus ( c.1493–1541) who coined gnome as a synonym of Pygmaeus, the name given to a member of a mythical race of very small people believed to live in parts of Ethiopia and India. The gnomes of Zurich are Swiss financiers or bankers, thought of as having a sinister influence over international monetary funds. Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson popularized the phrase in 1956: ‘All these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing’. Gnomic (early 19th century) meaning ‘clever but hard to understand’, as in ‘gnomic utterances’, is a different word. It comes from Greek gnōmē ‘thought, judgement’, which was related to gignōskein ‘to know’. See also naff

noun

Origin

You would not really confuse a gnome with a pygmy, but the terms are closely related. It was probably the Swiss physician Paracelsus ( c.1493–1541) who coined gnome as a synonym of Pygmaeus, the name given to a member of a mythical race of very small people believed to live in parts of Ethiopia and India. The gnomes of Zurich are Swiss financiers or bankers, thought of as having a sinister influence over international monetary funds. Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson popularized the phrase in 1956: ‘All these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing’. Gnomic (early 19th century) meaning ‘clever but hard to understand’, as in ‘gnomic utterances’, is a different word. It comes from Greek gnōmē ‘thought, judgement’, which was related to gignōskein ‘to know’. See also naff